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Rust has #3 going for it? Which major platforms are Rust-native or Rust-first, as with Java/Kotlin on Android, Javascript on the Web, ObjC/Swift on iOS, et c.?

littlestymaar 5y ago
Opening native development to a big number of people who would have otherwise never touched it. This may not be obvious at first, but AFAIK the majority of Rust users come from web languages (mostly JavaScript, Ruby and Python) and the fraction of programmers doing native/low-level stuff had been declining for decades and Rust is bringing a lot of new people to it. (Also webassembly, but it's a much smaller niche at the moment)
- handrous 5y ago
  I took rapsey's item #3 to mean that languages tend to grow well when they're required—or at the very least considered the first-class option—for accessing a desirable ecosystem or platform, which does seem to be one major way language adoption grows. Not just that they let developers do things they maybe weren't before (but could have been, in another language).
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    Yes, I think it's literally what was meant in the original comment, but I've given it a slightly broader definition because I think this aspect is a huge factor in Rust's popularity.
zozbot234 5y ago
Rust can be "native" on any platform that supports C/C++, provided only that the necessary pieces on the LLVM side are in place. There are even folks who will help you deploy Rust on console hardware where no publicly-available support can ever exist because the official C/C++ API's are kept secret and only made available to those who sign highly-restrictive NDA's.
- handrous 5y ago
  Right, it's portable, but that's not what 3 was about. It's about being required for first-class access to a desirable platform. It's why Objective-C gained strong, renewed interest when iPhone apps in that language were announced. It's why anyone cares about Javascript. It's why Kotlin adoption grew very fast when Google announced support for it on Android, or why Swift went from nothing to fairly high levels of use practically overnight. That kind of thing.

littlestymaar 5y ago

Opening native development to a big number of people who would have otherwise never touched it. This may not be obvious at first, but AFAIK the majority of Rust users come from web languages (mostly JavaScript, Ruby and Python) and the fraction of programmers doing native/low-level stuff had been declining for decades and Rust is bringing a lot of new people to it. (Also webassembly, but it's a much smaller niche at the moment)

handrous 5y ago
I took rapsey's item #3 to mean that languages tend to grow well when they're required—or at the very least considered the first-class option—for accessing a desirable ecosystem or platform, which does seem to be one major way language adoption grows. Not just that they let developers do things they maybe weren't before (but could have been, in another language).
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  Yes, I think it's literally what was meant in the original comment, but I've given it a slightly broader definition because I think this aspect is a huge factor in Rust's popularity.

zozbot234 5y ago

Rust can be "native" on any platform that supports C/C++, provided only that the necessary pieces on the LLVM side are in place. There are even folks who will help you deploy Rust on console hardware where no publicly-available support can ever exist because the official C/C++ API's are kept secret and only made available to those who sign highly-restrictive NDA's.

handrous 5y ago
Right, it's portable, but that's not what 3 was about. It's about being required for first-class access to a desirable platform. It's why Objective-C gained strong, renewed interest when iPhone apps in that language were announced. It's why anyone cares about Javascript. It's why Kotlin adoption grew very fast when Google announced support for it on Android, or why Swift went from nothing to fairly high levels of use practically overnight. That kind of thing.